Moment of Innocence, A Iran / France
1996, 78min.
 Script/Dir./Edit.: Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Dir. of Phot.: Mahmoud Kalari, Compos.: Majid Entezami, Prod. Design: Reza Alghemand, Sound: Nezameddin Kiaee, Prod.: Makhmalbaf Film House.
Cast: Mirhadi Tayyebi, Ali Bakhshi, Ammar Tafti, Maryam Mohammad - Amini, Moharram Zeinalzadeh, Fariba Faghiri, Maryam Faghiri, Lotfollah Gheshlaghi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Hana Makhmalbaf.
During Shah's regime when Makhmalbaf is a 17-year old guerrilla, along with a girl, who is a guerrilla as well they attack a policeman to disarm him. The policeman and Makhmalbaf wound each other and the girl disappears. 20 years later, when Makhmalbaf is a 37 year old director and gives an add in the newspaper for choosing the cast of Salam Cinema, the ex-policeman goes to Makhmalbaf's house and sends a message to Makhmalbaf through his youngest daughter Hana and asks for a role in the cinema. Makhmalbaf decides to make a movie of the disarmament from today's view. He chooses a 17-year old young man to play his role when he was young. Then each of them follows their own youth with a separate camera to track the truth in the method that the incident had taken place 20 years ago. Both of them reach the disarmament location from two different directions but the young man, who plays the role of Makhmalbaf's youth, is not willing to act violently and wound the policeman, even for justice. On the other hand it becomes obvious that the policeman, who didn't know about the attack incident, had fallen in love slow by slow with the guerrilla girl that has come along with Makhmalbaf for disarming him. And even when he gets wounded he does not discover the secret and he had carried the sorrow of that love in his heart and he was looking for his lost love all these years.
Awards
Special Jury Award, Youth Golden Award (Locarno IFFestival, 1996), Among Top Ten Films of the Decade – Awarded by International Festival Directors and Critics 1999.
Participation: 47 International Film Festivals | Makhmalbaf, Mohsen  Born 1957, Tehran, Iran
Born into a poor family. He began to support his single mother since he was 8 and by the time he turned 17, he had worked as bellboy, plain worker and anything else he could find in the 13 jobs he went through. A lower-class youngster in the poor southern districts of Tehran, Mohsen formed an under-ground Islamic militia group since he was 15 and by the time he was 17, he was shot and arrested while attempting to disarm a policeman. Expecting to remain in prison for much longer, he was released from prison shortly after the revolution in 1979. The 4-year incarceration helped him to educate himself in various fields and gain focus on his outlooks on life and the Iranian society. This intellectual renaissance led him to distance himself from politics and find better satisfaction in literature and the arts, especially cinema. At this stage in his life, he strongly believed that the Iranian society suffers more from Cultural poverty than anything else. Makhmalbaf became a writer and filmmaker of the post-revolutionary Iran. His literary activities included research into the arts, novels, short stories and screenplays that were published 27 books in Farsi, which some of them translated to English, French, Italian, Arabic, Urdu, Kurdish, Turkish, Korean, Portugaise, Greec, Russian, Japanese. He wrote, directed, edited and mainly produced 18 feature films and 6 short films as well as writing screenplays and editing films for various other Iranian filmmakers. His films attended international film festivals through out the world more than 1000 times and earned lots of awards from them. Makhmalbaf has also been the subject of many films and books that were made about him and his life. Since 1996, he temporarily abandoned his filmmaking career to teach. He formed the Makhmalbaf Film House in which he taught film to a select group of pupils including his own three children. He who in order to research for the making of the movie Kandahar, had secretly traveled to Afghanistan during the Taliban rule, upon witnessing the chaotic situation of the country infested with ignorance, oppression and poverty, became so disturbed that after the completion of Kandahar, took charge of executing 80 projects in a 2 year period on education and hygiene within Afghanistan as well as improving the living conditions of Afghan refugees in Iran..
Filmography
Nosuh’s Repentance (Tobeh Nosuh, 1983), Fleeing from Evil to God (Este'aze,1984), Two Blind Eyes (Do Cheshman Beesu,1984), Boycott (Baykot,1985), The Peddler (Dastforoush,1987), The Cyclist (Bicycleran,1987), Marriage of the Blessed (Arousi-ye Khouban,1989), Time of Love (Nobat e Asheghi, 1990), The Nights of Zayandeh-Rood (Shabhaye Zayendeh-Rood,1991), Once Upon a Time, Cinema (Nassereddin Shah, Actor-e Cinema,1992), Images from the Ghajar Dynasty (1993), The Actor (Honarpisheh,1993), Salaam Cinema (1995), Gabbeh (1996), A Moment of Innocence (Nun va Goldoon,1996), The Silence (Sokout,1998), Kish Tales (Ghesse haye kish, segment "The Door",1999), Tales of an Island (segment "Testing Democracy",2000), Kandahar (Safar e Ghandehar,2001), The Afghan Alphabet (Alefbay-e afghan, 2002), The Chair (2005), Sex & Philosophy (2005).
|
